Our first day of exploration — Jan 22

After the unpacking and drinking of the requisite coffee, we needed to get some food, and we wanted to do some exploration of the town, so off we went.  First, to pick up a bit of food at one of the large convenience stores and second to pick up some wine for Harold and some vodka for my martinis.  Done!

Then we started walking — delicately.  The “sidewalks” are rocky and are very hard to walk on, and at least for me, very hard on my feet (or at least one of them).  But we made it to the Malecon, the beautiful 1/2 mile walkway along the lake and we walked a small portion of it before we headed off to find the town Center.  Unfortunately, we headed in the wrong direction, and after a lot of walking on rough and rocky streets and seeing quaint little streets and some little shops, we decided to head back to our place.  At that point, I wasn’t so sure about Ajijic.  I was tired and hot and hadn’t seen what I expected the place to be like.

The “sidewalks” where we live

We rested a bit and after taking another look at the map of Ajijic, I realised we had turned in the wrong direction off the Malecon.  So after a cocktail on our beautiful patio, we struck out again for the REAL Town Center.  Quaint and quite wonderful it was.  Our destination was a Cocktail Bar that had trivia on Wednesday nights.  We were a bit late but a couple of tables allowed up to join them (separately), and our teams did well.  It was fun.  We have also learned some things about Ajijic in the past two days.

(1) First about the ex-pats at the cocktail bar.  Two leaders, one male and one female, and they did an excellent job.  I think they even made up the questions themselves, so they were in tune with what we all might know.  There were about 8 tables of 6 each, all expats and all around our age or younger.  There were three women at my table, for example, and they were all younger, probably by ten years The most surprising thing is that they had been there for 17 years, 10 years, and 8 years.  I was shocked.  They indicated that most of the expats who come to Ajijic stay, unlike the expats in Ecuador who seem to move around from location to location and country to country.

(2) Jorge, our driver from the airport, also passed on some info about the area from his experience having lived here for almost all of his life.  First, the palm trees.  You see a few, but not very many.  Recently, the palm tree weevil has infested the trees, and they are dying. Unfortunate.

A picture of the weevil from the internet.  People report seeing them on the sidewalks and even in houses., Happily, we haven’t seen any in ours!

(3) He also talked about the change from rural to city.  In the past, the lake was surrounded by mango groves which have all (?) been cut to make way for new housing.  While he appreciated the fact that the population increase has created new jobs for people, he also missed the beauty of the mango groves.  He also indicated that the people who sold them got an influx of money, but that at this point, they had minimal means to make a living.  They grew up as farmers and there wasn’t need for their kind of expertise any more.

(4)  Lastly, he talked about the lake.  I had asked if it was polluted and he said that it had changed immensely.  When he was young, you could swim in it and see the bottom because the water was so clear.  There also were tons of fish swimming right alongside you (or perhaps under you).  Now, the lake is very dirty, and it doesn’t get the same kind of use that it did in the past.  Also the kinds of fish have changed.  Now there are cat fish, tilapia, carp and a couple of other kinds.  He wasn’t sure of the names of the fish in English, but he didn indicate that some of the locals still fished and ate the fish, but that mostly people were eating fish from the sea.  In the past, the lake was full of white fish, but the tilapia changed that, and now there are no white fish.  The lake has gained some renown as a good bass fishing location, however.

So we are learning.

Arrival in Ajijic, unpacking, and our digs for the month

We had a long airport day!   We had airline snafus for both of the legs of our flight, which happily synchronized in timing somewhat so we were able to make both of our flights and get into the Guadalajara airport the night we were supposed to arrive, as opposed to going home to Pittsburgh to spend a night or to spend the night in Houston.  It was a couple hours later, but we still made it!

We arrived at the Guadalajara airport around 10:00, immigration was smooth, our luggage arrived (hooray), and our driver was there to pick us up.  He spelled our name incorrectly on the sign, but it was close enough!  We got to our apartment about 11:30 and Jorge showed us around and gave us some hints about the place.

We got a sense that the place was a bit more than we expected, and then we crashed.

The next morning — Jan 22 — I woke up looking at the most beautiful bedroom ceiling I think I’ve ever seen in a house — a huge curved brick arched ceiling with a wonderful cupola at the top with an orate chandelier hanging from the middle of the cupola.  I thought I might just spend the entire month in bed starring at the gorgeous ceiling.  But hey — we had things to do!

We got up and unpacked, trying to figure out the most logical arrangement for everything, and it was during this process that we became more aware of how absolutely architecturally gorgeous the place is. The ceilings are amazing, not only the bedroom, but also in a TV/family room, which also had some fabulous views.

The ceiling in the TV/family room

Then there was the rooftop patio with ever more spectacular views (we had our coffee there).

That’s the lake in the background

The view toward the houses behind us

A second view (on the other side) of the houses behind us

And some views in front of us

After some city exploring (more on that later), I crashed on the living room couch, stared up, and realised I could spend the month on that couch too — just looking up at the architectural beauty above me.

Those four. Brick expanses are all curved, and there is a skylight window over on the left.  You can also see the stairs to one of the bedrooms, and a second set of stairs to the rooftop patio.

The view to the living room from the stairs

Yes, the place is gorgeous.  Two bedrooms (come visit), three beautiful bathrooms, a laundry room, and everything else we will need for the month.

Ceiling above the dining room table

We have learned that these graceful curved brick ceilings are in this area only.  Amazing brick artisans!  Not sure if they still do this kind of work or not, but our ceilings look reasonably new.  We’ve seen a few others that are in rough shape.

Oh, and a nice entry too.

We definitely paid “gringo” prices for this place, which was bigger than we needed, but I rationalised.  I wanted a view of the lake and the mountains, since we look out at buildings from our condo in Pittsburgh, and I wanted to be within walking distance of the water and the Town Center.  All were achieved, but the pictures of our Air BnB place certainly did NOT do it justice.

The upshot — it will be a happy place for us for the next month.